Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

commerce posts

Filed under: Business, Internet

Is Buy.com partnership transforming eBay from a marketplace to a store?

eBay + Buy.com
Online auction site eBay may have started as a marketplace where anyone could buy or sell used books, toys, computer parts, or other junk, but over the last decade the site has turned into much more than that. Many power sellers depend on eBay for their livelihood, whether their running a bricks and mortar store and selling excess inventory online or selling handmade goods or items rummaged from yard sales.

So when eBay comes along and strikes a partnership with online superstore Buy.com, some independent sellers were a little ticked off. The Buy.com eBay store features hundreds of thousands of items. While the terms of Buy.com's deal with eBay haven't been disclosed, many eBay sellers assume that the auction site has waived the listing fee for Buy.com, only charging the company a commission when items actually sell.

From eBay's standpoint, this makes perfect business sense. How do you make sure your online marketplace always has a steady stream of goods that people can order? Partner with a large company that offers everything from electronics to sporting goods. But some independent sellers feel that by flooding the marketplace with cheap Buy.com items, eBay is effectively killing mom & pop stores.

What do you think? Do you use eBay to buy or sell items? Would you rather see an eBay populated with bargains from major online retailers, or are there enough internet commerce sites that already offer this service? Would you rather eBay remain a place to buy new and used items from independent sellers?

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Avoid pesky shipping costs with Free Shipping On

Free Shipping On
Has this ever happened to you? You run out of ink, paper, good books to read, or something else, so you go online to order replacement as soon as humanly possible. You find what you need for a good price, add it to your cart, and then when you hit the checkout button the shipping charges hit you like a 2 ton heavy thing. The truth is while many sites like Amazon promise free shipping on orders over a certain price, it's not always easy to tell if an item qualifies for free shipping.

Free Shipping On is a new service that makes it easier to find free shipping deals. First, the site has a huge database of deals and coupon codes you can use to get free shipping from stores like Newegg, Circuit City, Staples, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Apple. The site is sort of like CouponMountain, Techbargains, or xpBargains, except it focuses specifically on free shipping deals.

But you can also use the service to search Amazon and eBay only for items that can be shipped for free. No more surprises in the checkout aisle... or cart.

[via AppScout]

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services

eBayers save billions each year

eBay
There's a reason we love to shop on eBay and other auction sites that sell new and used goods. It's cheaper to buy second hand stuff than to walk into a store and buy it in a shiny new package. How can you put a value on that? Pretty easily it turns out.

Two researchers at the University of Maryland found that consumers saved more than $7 billion in 2003. While the team didn't look at all of the data from last year, their model estimates that the number may have climbed to $19 billion in 2007.

What's interesting about these findings is that the researchers looked at data from Cniper, a web service that places last minute bids for eBay users. By comparing the maximum amount users were willing to pay with the actual ending price of auctions, the researchers determine that the average customer was willing to spend $4 more per auction than they actually spent.

So on the one hand, eBay and similar sites are proving their worth by allowing users to save some serious money. On the other hand, the study shows that sellers could be making a lot more money than they currently are. Can we blame eBay for the impending recession? Probably not. But it's always fun to have a few more places to point your finger, isn't it?

[via ZDnet/Reuters]

Filed under: Business, Internet

It's hard to pay the bills with ads: PipeBytes charges for file transfers now


Back in November we took a look at a promising new service that lets you send large files to friends or colleagues without using an instant messenger, FTP site, or web parking service like YouSendIt. PipeBytes lets you establish a direct connection with another user. All you do is select a file you want to upload and PipeBytes will give you a code to share with a friend who will be able to download that file directly from your PC.

At launch the service was completely advertising supported. But a funny thing happened when we went to try it again the other night. We noticed our file transfer was going extraordinarily slowly. Like 128Kbps slow.

It turns out PipeByes has decided that playing YouTube videos with advertisements wasn't paying the bills and the service is capping your upload/download speeds unless you pay for faster service. We suppose that's fair enough, and $0.99 for a one day speed pass that bumps your transfer speeds up to 1.5Mbps seems reasonable. But we can't imagine why anyone would pay $19.99 a month when they could set up an FTP server for free.

Our prediction: PipeBytes will either have to increase its 128Kbps cap on free transfers to attract more regular users or the service will ride off into obscurity.

Filed under: Business, Internet

PayPal will let you buy stuff on sites that don't accept PayPal

PayPal credit cardsLike buying things online but don't feel like giving out your credit card number to a gazillion different web stores? For a few years now PayPal has been the big name in one-stop checkouts. Just sign up for a PayPal account, link up your bank account or credit card number, and send and receive payment for your eBay auctions and buy stuff from participating retailers.

But while most stores take credit cards, there's still plenty of shops out there that won't accept PayPal. So tomorrow PayPal is launching a new service that will let you shop at those stores too.

Basically, PayPal will generate a new virtual credit card number every time you want to buy something on a site that doesn't have a PayPal checkout button. The company is partnering with MasterCard Inc to provide the "Secure Card" service. And we're guessing the service will go a long way toward helping PayPal fend off newcomers in the online payment marketplace like a little company called Google.

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, Microsoft

Microsoft buys shopping comparison engine JellyFish

Microsoft buys shopping comparison engine JellyFish

Microsoft has just acquired JellyFish, a comparative shopping engine.

The team in Redmond Washington has been working on shopping and commerce components for Live Search, and the recent addition of JellyFish to the Live team could mean some new improvements for the MSN Shopping space.

Jellyfish calls itself the "internet's first buying engine". The service pieces together the shopping puzzle with information and content relating to the particular item you might be interested in and presents you with trusted merchants to take your pick from. Jellyfish makes money by taking a share of the revenue associated with the purchase and actually split it with the buyer. Advertisers in the JellyFish marketplace compete by paying more to get higher on the listings. This in turn makes the end price lower. Everyone's happy. Customer got their product cheaper, and merchant got a sale.

What does this mean for users of Live.com search? We're sure a few more highly targeted and relevant product links will be appearing in the search results. But the real question is, will Microsoft continue the JellyFish revenue sharing model, or keep all that cash for themselves?

Filed under: Business, Web services

Mini-eBays finding a niche

Remember when Yahoo Auctions folded up shop? Like many, we here at Download Squad were more than a little disappointed, but we absolutely understood that eBay had become a juggernaut, and competing with the world's biggest auction site was a losing proposition for Yahoo. Even uBid, arguably the second-most-significant auction site, can't touch eBay in terms of volume.

Naturally, we were surprised to hear about a couple of guys from the Chicago area that decided to build their own miniature eBay using yard sales as their selling gimmick. The result? A group of sites that allow their user community to sell and buy on a local basis. Napervilleyardsales.com supports a garage sale community in an upscale Chicago suburb, while sister-site Jolietyardsales.com (which looks nearly identical) offers the same service a few miles up the road.

At first blush, we wondered, why wouldn't people just use eBay? Then it made sense--between eBay's per-item listing fees, commission percentage, and large geographic reach, eBay may not actually be the right answer for the localized selling that gives yard sales their unique charm.

The guys that run these yard sale sites have six or seven of them up and running, and they don't cross list items between the sites, so they really are local-only listings. A far cry from eBay. Who knows if these yard sale web site guys are actually turning a profit, but it stands to reason, if you keep things local and build enough of these sites, maybe you can still compete against the world's biggest site for "selling your old junk".

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio

Joystiq

TUAW

Daily Finance

Autoblog

Urlesque

Engadget

WoW

Switched.com

FanHouse